Housing policy aids LGBT grad students

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The university took a positive step toward ensuring all students
are treated equally when Chancellor Albert Carnesale announced
recently that domestic partners will be eligible for graduate
student housing.

The university’s new policy will be a relief to both
current and prospective members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender community. Unlike most undergraduate students, many
graduate students are not independent; they have their own
families, other jobs and sometimes relocate from other cities.
Having the university provide housing makes it easier for students
to accommodate themselves in new surroundings; it helps alleviate
the burden of finding and securing housing in an area they may not
know. There’s no reason why LGBT students with domestic
partnerships, who are affected by the same change of environment as
their counterparts, should be denied university housing. If the
university is truly committed to attracting the most talented
graduate students, that group will undoubtedly include gay students
who will choose to go to universities most concerned with meeting
their needs ““ UCLA can only benefit from being one of these
schools. Providing campus housing to LGBT graduate students should
not elicit opposition: the university is neither condoning nor
advocating LGBT relationships any more than it does heterosexual
relationships. Instead, the university is doing what all public
universities should do: provide resources to all of its students,
regardless of whether their needs are viewed as politically correct
by everyone else.